Kraftwerk were forced to cancel their show in Melbourne for the Global Gathering Festival on the [Saturday] 22nd of November 2008, when Fritz Hilpert suffered from a heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Ralf Huetter, as well as another performer of the show walked up on stage 20 minutes after they were due to start, to announce the news.

The MC in the beginning is announcing how Fritz Hilpert has suffered a minor heart attack and has been rushed to hospital... so kraftwerk will not be performing but the [not so] good news is that the Gorillaz [sounds system] will be performing on the main stage instead. [from YouTube]

The video of the announcement is below. Hopefully he is okay, and it looks like Kraftwerk ended up performing the next day.

In other sad news (for Kraftwerk at least), they lost a German copyright court case...

they were suing German rap producer Moses Pelham.

Pelham had used a two second sample of Kraftwerk's track 'Metal On Metal' and Kraftwerk weren't happy about it...

...The new ruling states that a sample can be used, but it must not be the melody of a song, and it must be a completely new composition, baring no resemblance to the original. [Undercover]

Comments (4)

"He said he had never been threatened with a lawsuit, although both iTunes and a CD distributor stopped carrying his last album, “Night Ripper,” because of legal concerns. (It had sold 20,000 copies before then, according to Nielsen SoundScan.) It may not be in the interests of labels or artists to sue Mr. Gillis, because such a move would risk a precedent-setting judgment in his favor, not to mention incur bad publicity."

I suppose this clears the 'Numbers' and 'Tour de France' edits off FeedThoseAnimals.

The German courts did not rule that sampling is legal (although one could say that it ruled that sampling is not necessarily illegal). It did rule that generally permission needs to be obtained even when using "smallest sound bites". However, the court ruled that one can abstain from asking for permission if the tone sequence is built into a new and clearly different works.

It does not influence US courts or rulings, but I do think its important because its the first time in a couple of years that a court has considered originality or similarity when deciding whether sampling constitutes copyright infringement. If the ruling stands up it would prevent Germany from going the US way - i.e. that any sample, regardless of how small, distorted or unrecognisable, needs to be licensed.

Indirectly it might have an effect on other countries, because it does point to an alternative way of handling the sampling question. Chances are that the judges had one good look at the US situation and decided they don’t want to go down that route (there is a culture of avoiding lawsuits in Germany, and any payouts are not nearly as high as in the US). It might be that courts in other European countries will decide to follow the German example if it proofs practical (i.e. if the ruling holds up and does not create any sort of blowback).

Also, another example, in the UK the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 established that a 'substantial part' of the copyrighted work must be used in order to constitute infringement. In the case of sampling case law indicates that a ‘substantial part’ may be as short as 7.5 seconds (Produce Records Ltd vs BMG Entertainment Ltd 1999). However, the sample is considered ‘substantial’ by reference to its quality rather than its length. If it is recognisable, however short, as coming from the original piece of music or recording then it should be regarded as being substantial and the necessary permissions should be sought.